Hoping for a better education system

Are we completely void of hope for our education system? Do I want to give up on my students? I was asked these questions many times last week following my column on the forgotten children in our schools. I thought about all these questions and wondered if I had secretly given up hope just after two years as a teacher.

I remembered the many instances I wanted to quit. I wanted to quit when I couldn’t control my class. I wanted to quit when a student threw a piece chalk on my face. I wanted to quit when a student yelled profanities at me. I wanted to quit when my Form One student tested positive for drugs. I wanted to quit when the entire class left their English paper empty. I wanted to quit when I longed for the comfort of my corporate job.

But something always held me back. Maybe it was the tiny bit of hope I felt when someone donated sets of Peter and Jane books for my students and they excitedly started learning to read. Maybe it was the happiness I felt when a fellow teacher set up “Project Kenyang” to provide proper nutritious meals for his malnourished students. Maybe it was the enthusiasm of a fellow teacher setting up “Block A”, a community project to provide free tuition for more than 200 children in one of the poorest communities in Penang. Maybe it was the raw “semangat” of a fellow teacher setting up a basketball club in her school and training her students to compete in state level competitions.

Looking back, hope was the one thing that never left me in these two years. People often look at me in despair and ask me why I do what I do. Why teach? Family and friends often tell me to move to a different school where I get to work with motivated students. Why are you still there? The truth is, we don’t go where we want to, we go where we are needed. Your talent, energy and optimism is not needed in a school full of motivated students. It is needed in the community with broken and forgotten children.

The process of change and education reform, especially in Malaysia, will be a slow and painful one. There will be instances where we will be convinced that nothing can be done to untangle ourselves from the mess we’re in. We will look at our Pisa rankings and we’ll panic. We’ll push higher order thinking skills in all our questions and hope beyond hope that we are moving in the right direction towards building a world-class education system.

And in the midst of all that, there will be teachers. Teachers who, as my fellow teacher put it, “consciously put on the Messiah complex” and go all out to save our kids. Teachers who stay back after school every day to teach the basics of reading, writing and numbers to our 15 year olds. Teachers who know that statistically, 60% of our students do not meet the minimum benchmarks for Mathematics and 43% do not meet proficiency levels in Science, yet we’re still going to teach them the basics. We will be terrified of these numbers but we will not stop. We will make that silent promise to ourselves to only stop when we’re done.

So ask me again if there’s hope and I will tell you yes. According to Unesco, half of the world’s 57 million out-of-school children live in conflict zones. Despite the many factors hindering access to education, we still see countless education initiatives in Iraq, Ukraine and Afghanistan working to improve learning conditions. As long as the world still believes that children have the right to be educated, then we should all believe that one day, all children in Malaysia will have the opportunity to attain an excellent education. And you and I, we can be part of making this dream a reality. – November 27, 2014.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.